1. Field of the Disclosure
Embodiments relate to an illuminance and proximity sensor that senses an illuminance and a proximity of an object.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
An image sensor is a semiconductor device for converting an optical image into an electric signal. Among the types of image sensors, there are a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) type image sensor and a CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Silicon) type image sensor.
The image sensor may be incorporated into an apparatus having a camera mounted thereto, for example, a mobile phone, and the like. In general, such apparatus is provided not only with the image sensor, but also a proximity sensor for measuring a distance from the apparatus to a subject, and an illuminance sensor for measuring the illuminance or illuminance level of the external light.
For example, power consumption of a backlight unit in the mobile phone is adjusted, and/or activation of a touch sensor in the mobile phone is determined, according to the proximity measured by the proximity sensor. This can prevent the mobile phone from malfunctioning. And, the power consumption of the mobile phone can be reduced by adjusting the brightness of the display in the mobile phone according to the brightness of the external light, as measured by the illuminance sensor.
In general, since the illuminance sensor requires an IR cutoff filter to remove infrared rays, and the proximity sensor requires an IR pass filter that passes only infrared rays, it is not easy to include or integrate illuminance sensing and proximity sensing into or onto a single chip.